Compromiso moral y ético para liderar la escuela

Alec is in the living room with the television turned up. Best left alone. He doesn’t hold with Pauline Hanson. She’s ranting again about the divisive and discriminatory policies that privilege Aboriginal people and multi-cultural affairs. Even here, on the veranda, her fishwife voice penetrates Cynthia’s peace.

It’s a threat to the fabric of the Australian culture, identity and shared values. Counting votes, even the Prime Minister’s beginning to talk up her brand of what it takes to be “Australian”.

Cynthia focuses her attention on the pounding of the surf, a continuous, even drumbeat underpinning the thoughts that clamour without order and threaten to overwhelm her. The letter from Caly is folded and stored in her breast pocket, presses against her heart. She still cannot take it in, not really, that Madeleine would let her go, would encourage her to go, in the care of Vin Satler. Her little sister’s flaws are well known to her, God knows, but that she could be so naïve … so irresponsible.

After Dolly had told her what he’d done to Frankie, not long after it had happened, she had tried to discuss Vin, but Madeleine would not listen, had brushed it off as a case of things getting out of hand when young men are having fun, combined with Frankie’s own wild behaviour. The girl’s drinking, her reported vindictiveness towards whitefellas, Madeleine had argued, makes Vin a good target for her fanciful story. I know him, Madeleine had said. He’s charming. And anyway, why would he? Do that? When he can have any woman he wants?

She’s back in town, Frankie. But for how long is anyone’s guess. There’s a pattern to it, a good job in Carnarvon or Perth, and then after a year, sometimes even less, she’s back. Dolly does her best, but what can she do? Frankie’s a grown woman.

‘You intend sitting out here all night?’ Alec walks between her and the horizon, his shadow falling across her eyes so that she’s in darkness, the moonlit sky blocked from view.

‘Out here I don’t have to look at that despicable woman,’ Cynthia says. ‘You off to bed?’ Alec throws himself into the chair beside her. Ice clinks in his glass as he takes a drink. ‘Any mail?’

‘The usual junk.’

‘But you’ve heard from her?’ He can’t bring himself to say it: have you heard from my daughter?

‘Yes.’

127 ‘She’s fine. You can read the letter if you like.’

‘It isn’t me she writes to.’ He swallows the last of the whiskey in one gulp. ‘She okay?’ ‘She’s fine. The people are nice. She’s been skating. It’s freezing of course. They’ve had record cold temperatures.’

‘Your sister is a damned fool to let her go there on her own. The gun capital of the world.’ ‘That’s hardly relevant, after the massacre at Port Arthur.’

‘And who’s going to pay the price for that– it’ll end up so that a bloke can’t even own a rifle. Even Howard’s on the bandwagon.’

‘I hope they do round up the guns. And anyway, they’re not going to take yours. Everyone knows that farmers need guns.’

‘It’s still not safe. She’s just a kid. And with that damned Stephen sniffing around.’

‘Don’t start, Alec.’ If it wasn’t for you, she’d be here for the holidays, not thousands of miles away. ‘Anyway, he’s not in New York. He’s in Boston, miles away.’

‘If not him, there’ll be plenty more hanging around.’ Just like her mother, Cynthia knows that’s what he’s thinking. You’d know, she wants to say.

At the first flash of lightening, the dogs stir at her feet. ‘You were out all day,’ Alec says.

‘I decided to take a look at the south-eastern boundary, after that rain.’ ‘Looks like we’re in for more.’

‘Good for the country. You know Alec, keeping the sheep off that area last year was a good decision. The vegetation’s thick and loaded with flower and seed, animals scurrying about everywhere – I couldn’t help but think of Dolly’s mob. I wish to god we could, oh, I don’t know – hand this place back to them, do something.’

‘You think that’s going to solve anything? In no time at all, everything that makes this a viable sheep station would be a wreck. You see what they’re like, how they live. Oh, not Dolly, of course, she’s a good woman, but even so, she wouldn’t have a clue how to run this place. And what about all the hangers-on?’

‘So you think we know how to run this place? With a huge overdraft, wool prices way down, the cattle worth bugger all. Years and years of hard work and what have we got to show for it?’

‘You should’ve been more like your sister– selfish. Instead of marrying me you could have a big house on the river, an apartment in London. Swanning round the world. Where is she now?’

‘Vienna.’

‘I know I’m a right sod a lot of the time, but we’ve done alright, haven’t we Cyn?’ Even hidden there in the darkness she can make out his features, tense with resentment and grief. He

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reaches his hand towards her, finally placing it upon the armrest of the chair.

‘Looks like we’re in for a night of it,’ she says. The moon is hidden in the breakers of cloud building in the bruised sky, the smell of rain-damped earth already in the air. She stands, calls softly to the dogs. ‘I’m going to bed. Don’t forget Thornton’s coming tomorrow morning to discuss …’

‘For fuck’s sake, as if I need reminding. What’s to discuss? They’ll either give us the fucking money or they won’t.’

Cynthia doesn’t hear. Lightning sears the horizon like a great scar. When the thunder hits immediately overhead, she jumps. She barely makes it into the house before the curtains of rain seal them in.

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